Chapter 60 – The Yggdrasil Jarl (Yara and Edward) (1)
The lift hummed softly as it climbed.
I reached into the inner pocket of my coat and brushed metal.
The mask.
The first "disguise" I'd bought on a whim, back when all I had was one starving elf and a handful of stolen cult coins. Back then it had just been leather. A simple half-mask to hide my face when I didn't want questions.
Now it wasn't leather at all.
Outside, it still looked like the same worn half-mask: dark, scuffed, the sort of thing any cheap mercenary might wear. Inside, it was layered adamantium—my name, my alloy, stolen from a world that didn't exist here yet. Future-copper alloy, carbon fibre, high-grade stainless steel, titanium, all hammered and fused together under my hand and Ethan's madness.
The leather was the lie.
The real shape was a full mask that covered everything from the bridge of my nose to my jaw, runes etched so fine they were almost a shimmer, anchored to a mana cell tucked into the inner rim.
Transmogrification held the illusion in place, compressing adamantium into "leather," letting my mouth show through like it was nothing more than cloth. The kind of advanced spell that would have entire circles of warlocks drooling if they realised what they were looking at.
They wouldn't.
That was the point.
The mana cell—cheaper than the one embedded in Melody's pommel—fed the spell for about a week before needing to be recharged. More than enough. Especially when every mage and non-mage in Yggdrasil now carried double mana cells by default. Small conveniences that didn't scream "ancient artefact" and get you murdered in an alley.
I lifted the mask and settled it over my face.
The metal shifted, shivered, then relaxed into the familiar leather half-mask everyone knew. Warmth bled into the edges as the transmogrification took hold, syncing with my pulse.
I flexed my jaw.
To anyone else, it was just a bit of leather.
To me, it was armour for a face that too many people had started to recognise.
With a soft chiming clunk, the lift stopped.
The doors slid open.
Training noise spilled in—shouts, the thud of feet, the crack of wooden weapons on padded shields. And under it all, the rustle and murmur of too many people packed into one space, waiting.
The training hall had grown since the day I first dug it out.
High, concrete ceiling. Reinforced columns. Lines of practice dummies and targets. Sand pits for sparring. To the side, bleachers for onlookers and Thralls in between drills. A place that looked, from the outside, like any large mercenary training ground.
The difference was in the eyes.
The new thralls—kids, teenagers, a few adults—sat or stood in lines, backs straight, faces nervous. Their clothes were clean but simple, a step up from orphanage rags, a step below proper uniforms. They watched two figures in the central ring with a mixture of awe and terror.
Yara and Edward.
To the untrained eye, they were arguing.
To anyone who understood combat, they were dancing.
Yara moved first.
Small, dark, a blur of tight muscle and contained fury. Her hair, cropped shorter now, flashed as she ducked under Edward's guard, bare feet kicking up dust. She wielded a short staff today, cracking it toward his ribs in a blow that would have broken bone if he hadn't stepped aside at the last heartbeat.
Edward took the hit on his forearm guard, rolled with the impact, and came back in with a low sweeping kick that sliced through the space her ankle had just left.
To the thralls, it probably looked like chaos.
To me, it was measured.
Limit-testing.
Lovers, not siblings, mapping each other's timing with the kind of intimacy you only got from surviving together and refusing to let go.
The instant they saw me, everything stopped.
Yara's head snapped toward the lift.
Her face lit up like someone had turned on a sun just for her.
"Brother!"
Edward followed her gaze a half-second later.
"Boss!"
They said it in the same breath.
It should have been comforting, that familiarity. That lack of distance. Unlike Julia's worship or Zoe's terrifying devotion, these two had always looked at me like a person first.
At first.
They ran.
In perfect synchrony, they closed the distance, then dropped as one.
Both of them fell to their knees so hard their foreheads almost bounced on the smooth floor.
Their hands stretched out in front of them, palms flat, fingers spread—a full prostration. Not the half-bow of a subordinate. The kind of kowtow you gave to gods and emperors and things you wanted to call mercy from.
The thralls around them scrambled to follow, stumbling into bows and kneels, some copying the gesture, others freezing halfway down, unsure of the protocol.
The air shifted.
The mask warmed against my skin.
…So much for "see me as a normal person."
"Raise your heads," I said.
My voice came out slightly lower through the mask, the rune in the metal flattening the sharper edges into something calmer. Controlled.
They lifted their faces.
Edward first.
He was in his twenties now. Not old—no one in this place was old—but he carried himself like someone who'd spent too long waiting for the axe to fall. His frame was lean, muscle built for endurance and sudden violence rather than show. The standard Yggdrasil black uniform sat clean on him, arm brace strapped over his right forearm, throat guard buckled tight.
His eyes, though.
His eyes flickered as they met mine.
Not with fear.
With memory.
***
Edward
Don't look at yourself. Look at her.
That was always the first thought.
Yara's weight in his arms. Too light. Too hot. Not the heat of a warm bed or a shy kiss behind a pantry door. Fever heat. The kind that had burned for so long that "hot" felt normal now. Her hair used to be soft; now it stuck to his skin, damp with sweat and whatever seeped out from under the growths.
His lover.
Not a sister. Not a friend. The noble girl who'd laughed with him in the back corridors, who'd whispered "let's run" before he ever had the courage to suggest it, who'd chosen him over silk sheets and safe prayers.
He shifted her to his back again, because his arms burned and his leg screamed and none of that mattered.
"Ed…"
Her voice was dry. Wrong. Yara did not have a dry voice. Yara's voice was always wet with laughter, even when she was scolding him.
"Yeah?" he said. Or tried to. It came out as a croak.
"Stop," she whispered. "You'll fall."
"If I stop," he said, "we die."
It was simple.
Step. Step. Drag the bad leg. Don't think about how the cysts bulging under his skin rubbed against his trousers, raw and sore. Don't think about how his knee didn't want to bend anymore. Don't think about the way the ground had gone from cobblestone to dirt to roots and now to forest undergrowth without him noticing when the city stopped.
He'd left the city behind.
Left the church that had turned them away because "resources are limited and we must prioritise the children who can still be saved."
Left the noble house where he'd been a servant, where Yara had been a girl in fine dresses sneaking into the kitchens, left the old mistress who'd said "it's a shame" and nothing else when the Awaken started eating her favourite's face.
Left everything.
For what?
He trudged forward.
One more step.
If he kept moving, maybe a miracle would see them.
If he stopped, the disease would win.
He hated it.
The Awaken.
Nice name. Romantic. Sounded like a blessing. Truth was, it grew like rot. Lumps of wrong flesh that weren't really flesh, sliding just under the skin, burrowing into nerves.
On Yara, it had taken her face first.
Cyst-like tissue had crawled up her cheek, across her eye, turning it a milky colour that made the priests flinch. It had spread over half her scalp. Hair burned away in patches. Skin blistered then smoothed into something that wasn't skin anymore.
They'd called her cursed.
Bad omen.
Contagion.
He'd called her beautiful, because lying was easier than listening.
On him, it had gone for his leg.
A mass had grown just above his knee, throbbing with each heartbeat, warping the way his muscles moved. Pain had been constant for so long he'd forgotten how to walk without it.
"Ed," Yara said again. "I'm heavy."
"You're nothing," he panted. "You're air."
"You're a bad liar," she murmured.
"Shut up," he said, but there was no heat in it.
Branches whipped his face. He didn't know when the trees had gotten this thick. He didn't know where the path was anymore. He just knew he'd walked until his fingers went numb and his throat felt like sand.
"Should've married you sooner," he heard himself say.
The thought slipped out. Stupid. Useless. No one was listening anyway.
If he hadn't whispered "we can be free" in the dark of the scullery. If he hadn't been stupid enough to think running would fix a disease the world didn't even understand. If he'd stayed, maybe someone richer, smarter, more connected could have helped.
Yara's fever-bright fingers brushed his cheek.
"Hey," she whispered. "Don't. Not your fault."
He wanted to argue.
There was no breath left to spend.
He staggered.
The forest around them felt… wrong.
The trees were too quiet. No birds. No rustle. Just the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears and Yara's uneven breaths against his neck.
Something moved ahead.
He squinted.
Eyes.
Not human.
Red and black in patches where fur should have been one colour. Muzzles too long. Teeth too sharp. Wolves, but not wolves. Magic-warped. Wrong.
They padded out of the undergrowth, three at first, then five, their bodies rippling with a kind of hunger that wasn't just for meat.
"Oh," he thought. "Of course."
His arms tightened around Yara.
He shifted her off his back and set her down behind a tree, as gently as he could with his leg threatening to fold.
Her hand grabbed his sleeve weakly.
"Don't," she whispered. "Ed, you can't even run."
"If I don't," he said, "they go through me to get to you."
The logic was so simple it hurt.
He took one step forward.
The wolves moved as one.
The first hit him low.
Teeth sank into his already bad leg, right above the main mass, like they'd been drawn to the weakness. Pain flared so bright he saw white. He swung anyway, fist connecting with fur and bone. Something crunched. The beast yelped and backed off, limping.
The second went for his arm this time.
Jaws clamped down on muscle.
He screamed.
He swung with the other hand.
Blood soaked his sleeve.
He didn't stop.
He couldn't stop.
He had no claws. No sword. Just fists and a body mostly held together by habit and stubbornness. He hit them because hitting was all he had, each punch a desperate, messy arc that didn't follow any taught form.
The wolves were smart.
They darted in and out, nipping, tearing, pulling back. Their goal wasn't to kill him fast. It was to make him bleed out. Make him slow. Make the next part easy.
He knew it.
He still couldn't do anything but stand.
His leg gave a warning tremor, the mass inside sliding wrong.
Another bite, this time to his shoulder.
He swung.
His vision blurred.
Yara was saying something behind him, voice too far away.
He fell to one knee.
He tried to push up.
His arms didn't answer.
His head dropped forward.
"Please," he thought, not sure who he was talking to. "Please. Just her. Take me, leave her."
The forest blurred.
The red-black shapes closed in.
He shut his eyes because he didn't want to see her die.
He heard something.
Not the wet tearing he expected.
A different sound.
Like air being cut.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He opened his eyes.
The wolves were dying.
Not falling, not rolling.
Stopping.
Pieces of them were… missing.
Limbs severed with clean lines. Heads parted from necks in a way that didn't match any claw or tooth. The beasts spasmed and dropped, blood steaming on the forest floor.
There was someone there.
A boy, younger than him, blond hair bound back, eyes too calm for his age. A sword rested on his shoulder, long and heavy, wrong for a body that small.
Beside him, a girl held his hand.
She looked… battered, not from disease but from living too hard, too fast. Blonde hair, tangled and dirty, clung to her thin face. Her eyes were a clear, steady brown that missed nothing. Her clothes were stained and torn in the way that said battle, not poverty.
She watched the dying wolves with a kind of distant focus, like she was committing every movement to memory, not for fun, not for cruelty, but because this was another piece of a world she was trying to understand.
The boy stepped forward, nudged one of the wolves with his boot, then looked at Edward.
Those blue eyes took in everything: the mass on his leg, the blood, the way Yara slumped against the tree, half of her face still a crawling, cystic mess.
"Found them," he said, like this was the most normal thing in the world.
His voice was tired.
Not from this fight.
From too many.
He walked closer.
Edward thought he should flinch. Run. Hide. Protest.
He couldn't do anything.
His body gave up the argument. He collapsed fully this time, back hitting the roots.
The boy knelt beside Yara first.
Of course he did.
Everyone looked at Yara first.
Except this time the look wasn't disgust. It was assessment.
Those fingers rested lightly against her cheek, precise, careful not to press on the swollen tissue. The girl with the brown eyes crouched too, watching, head tilted.
"What… are you…?" Edward rasped.
The boy glanced at him.
"Late," he said. "But not too late."
He placed his other hand on Yara's chest.
Mana moved.
Edward couldn't see it, but he felt it—like the temperature in the air had shifted, like the pressure around his own wound changed.
The Awaken inside Yara… calmed.
Not disappeared.
Re-threaded.
He wanted to ask how.
He didn't have time.
Those same hands moved to his leg.
A weight settled over the mass there, not physical, but undeniable. Something probed, assessed, made decisions.
Heat.
Cold.
Then something loosened.
The pain didn't vanish.
The shape did.
Piece by piece, the foreign tissue unwound, dissolved, re-knit into something that felt like his own flesh again. Nerves that had been screaming nonstop went quiet, as if someone had finally remembered to turn them off.
He gasped.
When he opened his eyes again, the boy was standing, sword resting casually against his shoulder.
Yara's face…
The crawling mass was gone.
In its place was smooth, dark skin, beaded with sweat. Her hair, short and uneven now, clung to her forehead, but it was hair. Not growth.
She looked… like herself.
Maybe better than he remembered.
His own leg looked… wrong in a different way.
Normal.
He flexed his toes.
They moved.
He tried his knee.
It obeyed.
A laugh that wasn't a laugh tore out of his throat.
"Who…" he managed. "Who are you?"
The boy looked at him.
For a second, Edward saw nothing but a child with a sword too big for his frame and a girl beside him who should have been anywhere but here.
Then the light shifted.
And he saw it.
The weight.
The lines drawn into the set of his shoulders.
The way the air sat slightly differently around him, like reality had gotten used to making room.
Not a boy.
Not to Edward.
Something else.
Something that had answered when he'd begged for help.
"…God," Edward whispered.
The word slipped out before he could censor it.
If the boy heard, he didn't show it.
He just held out a hand to help Edward up, while the blonde elf girl—Julia, though Edward didn't know her name yet—watched with quiet, unreadable eyes.
***
The training hall came back into focus.
Edward's forehead was still pressed to the floor, hands flat. His body kneeling beside Yara, both of them bowed before someone who wore the same face as the boy in the forest, just older, masked, eyes a little colder.
Erynd.
Boss.
Saviour.
God, if Edward let himself say it.
When he lifted his head and looked up, the first thing he saw was the half-mask.
The old leather that wasn't leather.
The eyes above it, calm and unreadable, watching him with the same assessing gaze as that day.
Nothing had changed.
Everything had.
Edward's lips parted.
"My…" he began.
The word "lord" almost slipped out.
He caught it, barely, bashing it into something less blasphemous at the last heartbeat.
"…boss," he said instead. "Welcome back."
His heart pounded like it was still in that forest.
Like every step he took now, every order, every breath, was borrowed from that moment.
The moment a boy with a sword and a quiet blonde girl at his side had walked into his prayer and coloured it in.