The villagers in the Rad-Town at the base of the mountain range welcomed the rest of the group with open arms. Once they saw just how many people were going to be staying the night, a small feast was held in celebration. It was the largest number of visitors that the village had ever seen.

And that wasn’t mentioning that one of those members was recognized, even if he had never been there before.

“What’s your name again?” The lady that had silenced the elder walked up to Nic, curiosity all over her face. About to respond to the question, Nic finally took a second to look at the woman and found himself stumbling over his words.

“W-what?” His confused reaction drew the attention of those near him.

“How?!” Aria had a similar reaction when she looked at the woman.

They both had seen it. The woman looked eerily similar to Nic’s mother. Almost too similar. Nic felt like he was staring straight at her.

“Is something wrong?” Her sweet voice drug up memories of his mother even faster.

“N-n-no.” Nic stumbled back. “You just look like my mother.”

A soft smile drifted across the woman’s lips as he spoke.

“I see…” Her eyes drifted away, like she was looking past Nic to something behind him. “Yea, that makes sense,” The woman nodded with a fierceness that set her eyes back on Nic. “I guess that means you’re the nephew I never knew I had. How is my little sister?”

“That’s Kayla’s son?”

“So she had a kid with Verilo?”

“Why is there a Verilo back here?!”

Nic found himself unable to speak. He could hear the whispers coming from the villagers around them. Well, they were less whispers and low talking. Everyone else that was a part of the diplomatic group, especially the four people that had spent a year with him at the university in Sanum, began to bristle at the more negative comments they heard.

“She’s…” When Nic finally found himself able to talk again, his voice was so quiet that his aunt could barely hear him. “She’s well.”

“That’s good. I take it that the little rascal she ran off with is fine as well?” His Aunt beamed a large smile at him, but Nic once again found himself unable to get the words out.

He could barely remember his mother ever talking about the family she ran away from. She had done it because the village was ostracizing him once they found out he was a Verilo.

“Umm…” A soft voice spoke up from next to Nic. “I’m sorry to interrupt Mrs…”

“Call me Mika.”

“Uh, all right then. Mika, Nic’s father… he’s dead.” Aria softly spoke in Nic’s place. Her words forced an uncomfortable silence in the small clearing.

“Ah, I see.” Mika looked down uncomfortably. “Can’t say I saw that coming. How’d it happen?”

Her question was painful. Nic clutched at his chest. It had been so long since it happened, and yet Nic still felt the pain whenever he had to say it.

“He-”

“He sacrificed himself so that I could live.” Nic cut off Aria from answering. He had to be the one to say it. “So that I could live… and redeem our name.”

“And how do you plan on redeeming the Verilo name? It’s the name associated with the Irradiated Winter. Whatever you plan on doing has to be more impactful than that.”

“Do you not remember the deal we made earlier today?” Nic looked at his aunt with a small smile finally gracing his lips. His question was met with a confused look. “Aria, mind gathering it for me?”

“Huh? Right now?” Aria was shocked at the sudden request.

“What better time to do it than right now?”

Aria let out a sigh and stood up. In an instant, her body was enveloped in a light green glow. A torrent of wind whipped its way through the village. Its twirling caused a ruckus from the villagers. As Nic put a hand on her shoulder, the wind began to bring black mist through the air.

It coalesced in front of the two of them. Contracting into a black round sphere of gas sitting there. Villagers stared in awe at it.

“What is that! What are you doing?!” Mika yelled at the two of them. She reached towards them but was stopped by a wall made of wind.

“We’re freeing this town.” Nic stated calmly before reaching his hand out and grabbing the orb.

The darkness of it coiled around his arm. It snaked into his skin, into the very veins that his blood ran through. It filled it up with a sickening ease.

Irradiation never made it past Nic’s elbow. At that point, his own magic fully kicked in. The sickening sensation was stopped and pushed back. Nic’s arm glowed a ghastly white as it purified the Irradiation that was entering his system.

“It’s done.” After a minute, the wind died down. Nic let his perfectly good arm fall to his side as he looked at his aunt once again. “I have now upheld our end of the bargain.”

“What did you do…?” Mika stared at the empty space.

Before Nic had a chance to respond, one of the nearby homes had its front door burst open. A much older man stumbled out. He looked around in awe, as if it was his first time leaving that very house. Once one of the villagers saw him, confusion spread through the crowd.

“I have removed all Irradiation from this village. No longer are you a Rad-Town, you are now officially a City-State if you wish to be.”

His words shocked the people who heard him. It was a declaration that nine of them ever expected to hear. Luckily, none of the people who heard it were members of the faction that believed that bearing Irradiation was something good.

When the people of the village finally found their voices again, a loud ruckus ensued.

Aria and Nic were quickly surrounded by more and more people as the news spread.

Nic smiled softly as he heard the words of thanks that were thrown at the two of them. Not just because he was receiving those words, but because Aria was similarly getting the same praise.

The celebration grew even larger, lasting well into the night. It didn’t end even as the visitors that were a part of the delegation all gradually began to take their leave so that they could sleep.

Each one was offered a place to sleep in the houses of the villagers. Some decided to take rooms together, but in the end most slept separately.

Well after the sun had set and the moon was high in the sky, Nic and Aria finally walked up to Nic’s aunt and asked where they should sleep for the night.

“Mika!” Nic called out to her over the noise of the villagers.

“Hmmm? You don’t need to call me that! Auntie is just fine.” Nic’s aunt slapped him on the shoulder lightly.

Nic thought that it wasn’t right to simply move straight to that, especially when he didn’t know the woman. But he would at least add on the moniker.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Aunt Mika, where should the two of us stay the night?”

Mika clicked her tongue in slight annoyance before answering.

“I guess that works. Fine. You can stay in our family's home.” Mika led the two of them to a rather large building near the center of the town. Compared to most of the village houses, this one was particularly extravagant. The only building that Nic had seen that looked more extravagant was the church nearby.

Noticing their gazes, Mika spoke up. “Our family has led this town for many generations. Your mother was supposed to be the next leader, but when she ran off with your father, the duty fell to me.”

Nic was shocked. His mother rarely talked about her family, his extended family. Everything she said was brand new to him. Things he had never known about his heritage.

“I… Mother never talks about you or the rest of your family. The little that she does say, she says while wearing a pained expression.”

“Hah!” Mika started laughing as she opened a door into a small room. “She probably holds some regret for leaving as suddenly as she did.”

Mika stood aside so that Nic and Aria could enter the room. It was their accommodation for the night. But Nic barely looked at it.

“Mother said that you all knew who my father was, and that they ran because you all were going to ostracize him.”

“So that’s what she thought, huh?” Mika burst out in laughter as she held herself upright with the door. “Maybe she wasn’t as fit to be a leader as we all thought.”

Nic was unable to let that slide and grabbed his aunt by the collar of her shirt.

“Woah hold on!” Mika yelled quickly as Nic grabbed her. “I’m not trying to say she is stupid! The two of them were running from shadows, that’s it.”

“Shadows?”

“We never knew about your father. At least not until they ran away.”

Nic let go of her. His arm dropped to his side as he took a slight step back.

“Then…” His parents had to have run? He could have been born and grown up far away from that building in the forest?

Nic’s thoughts swirled in a jumbled mess of what could have been. Would he have ever met Aria? Or Sarman and Yuuki? Would he have ever learned to fight with a sword? Had he even broken the 500 year curse because his parents had run away from this town?

His eyes wandered to Aria again. He had spent so much time with her, it was becoming hard to even think of spending that time without her.

“Don’t go thinking that your life would’ve been much better here!” Mika forced Nic out of his own brain. “While we didn’t know who your father was before, we would have figured it out eventually. I don’t know how the town would have reacted if they found out while he was still living here…”

“Of course.” Nic heaved a long breath. His aunt was right. If they had stayed, there was no saying how the people would have reacted in the moment. More than likely, they would have reacted just like every other village had reacted to Nic on their way there. The whole reason the Verilo’s had always run was because villages ran them out when they learned the truth.

“Hahaha!” Mika slapped Nic on the shoulder before turning to finally leave. “I’ll leave you with that for tonight. Make sure you get some rest. We can talk more in the morning.”

With a small wave of her hand, Mika closed the door, leaving Nic alone with Aria. The latter had stayed quiet the entire time that Nic had been talking with Mika in the room. When Nic finally did turn to look at her, he found that she had already gotten ready to sleep and was simply sitting on the bed, waiting for him.

Nic sat down next to her and silently held her hand in his. The warmth in his hands reminded him that everything he had done so far epitomized the life he wanted.

“You have a lot more family than you thought, huh?” Aria laid her head on his shoulder as she spoke.

“I guess so.”

“What’re you thinking about?” Aria had noticed his distant expression.

“Just about what would have happened if my parents stayed here. How my life would have changed.”

“And what do you think?”

Nic squeezed Aria’s hand.

“I never want to switch my life for that one.”

“What? Why?” Aria moved her head to look at Nic, her eyes wide in surprise. He realized that she also probably thought that he would have had a better life.

Nic smiled and leaned in, his forehead touching Aria’s.

“Because I wouldn’t have met you.”

Her face flushed red as she quickly backed away for a second.

“It’s time to sleep!” Her eyes were diverted as she quickly hid under the blankets on the bed.

Nic chuckled quietly as he joined her.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep when Nic was jolted awake by the sound of a nearby explosion. Sitting up, Nic rubbed his eyes in grogginess as another explosion went off in the distance.

There was a slight bit of sunlight coming through the window in the corner. It was morning.

Aria was slowly waking up as well.

“Aria, I think something is going on.” Nic gently shook her by the shoulder before getting out of the bed.

He still had his clothes from the previous day on, having slept through the night with them on.

The door to the room swung open with a loud bang, fully making sure both Aria and Nic were wide awake. Standing in the doorway was Mika, holding two familiar sheathed swords.

“Nic, Aria! I see you’re already awake! Good.”

“Aunt, what’s going on?!” Nic was helping Aria out of the bed.

“There are monsters attacking the village. Your companions are already out there helping our guards fend them off. They sent me with these for you two.” Mika held out the swords. They were the two blades that Nic and Aria often used.

Nic grabbed them, attaching his sword to his waist in a single move while giving Aria hers. Once they were both ready, they followed Mika out of the house.

“Have they entered the village?” Aria spoke up as they ran through the center of the village.

“Not yet. Sarman has been keeping them away from the entrance with those explosions of his.”

Nic wasn’t surprised that Sarman was holding them off on his own. Even if it was a monster attack, it shouldn’t be that many at once.

So why had Sarman sent for Nic and Aria as well?

The Sanum portion of the delegation alone should have been more than enough to take care of a normal monster attack.

“Nic!” As the three of them reached the entrance to the city, Nic heard someone calling to him from the side. Laying on a stretcher was Sarah, a dark miasma radiating off of her shoulder.

This wasn’t a normal monster attack.

Sarman was firing off fire blasts in a wide berth around the village, holding back a horde far larger than normal. Nic couldn’t even see the individual monsters at this point. They were giving off so much Irradiation that Nic only saw a dark layer past a certain point.

The person who had called out to him as Kiara.

“Aria, help Sarman keep them away from the village for a few seconds. Once I have taken care of Sarah, I’ll be right there.”

“Got it.”

Nic quickly hurried over to the injured Sarah and quickly absorbed the Irradiation out of her. Once he saw that she was breathing normally again, with no traces of Irradiation, he nodded to Kiara before moving to help take care of the monsters.

Sarman and Aria were combining their fire and wind magics to deal with a large amount, but they couldn’t take care of everything at once. So, Nic ran towards the once section they weren’t able to focus on.

Nic started slashing through the monsters. Each time his sword touched any part of one, he was able to absorb the Irradiation holding them together.

To an onlooker he was taking care of them faster than the two spirit kings he was fighting alongside. His sword cut through them like butter, turning each and every one to dust in an instant.

With the arrival of Nic and Aria, the village’s normal guards found themselves with nothing to do except to watch these newcomers completely demolish the enemy standing in front of them.

When the final monster turned to ash, Nic thought that was it. He began walking over to Aria and Sarman. There was no more threat.

Until there was.

A deafening roar came from above. One that paralyzed all who heard it. Aria and Sarman, two of the most powerful Spirit Kings on the planet, were also paralyzed.

“The Lord of the Mountain!?”

One of the villagers called out the name, only to start a mass panic from the rest.

Nic could tell that this was something bad yet also uncommon.

And then he saw the shadow. On the ground, mirroring the flying beast above. Its widespread wings covered a large distance as they blotted out the sun.

Nic had heard of them before. Everyone had. But he thought they had been a legend, wiped out by the Irradiation.

A Dragon…

The dragon descended for a mere instant before flying into the air again. It flew straight towards the mountain next to them. It flew high into the air, disappearing in the clouds near the top.

Once he could move again, Nic realized too late what had happened.

He was the only person standing on the battlefield.

“Aria!?”

“Sarman!?”

Nic wasn’t the only one who called out someone’s name. Yuuki ran out onto the battlefield herself, shouting Sarman’s name.

Nic looked back up at the mountain as Mika spoke up.

“They were taken by the dragon.”