She had expected the young lady to return, but she hadn't expected to see her in this place. It felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under her when she saw someone standing by that grave.

She was displeased, there was no denying that. "I don't know how you found this place, but this is sacred ground for the people who live here."

For a second Rowena couldn't say anything, she felt as if there was a lump in her throat that she couldn't swallow or ignore. What could she say? She knew what this was, so there was no excuse for her coming here.

"I..." she started, expecting to be cut off, but Iris didn't say a word, just kept looking at her.

Not even knowing what to say, she closed her mouth and stared back. It was awkward, she felt embarrassed and like an idiot.

The older woman saw the implications behind Rowena's presence at the grave, indeed she was displeased, but she wasn't mad. She felt a lack of energy instead.

Sighing, she pointed to the woods surrounding Eisenwacht and the cemetery. "Shall we take a walk, my lady?"

Since she had no real options and knew that this wasn't going to be a mere stroll, there was no reason for the young noble to say no. Nodding her head, she caught up to Iris and matched her pace.

It took a few minutes of silence for her to realize that it wasn't that easy. Every slow, meandering step they took felt harder to her as Iris just looked at the trees and the summit far above their heads. Though she didn't really notice the undoubtedly frosty air through her cloak, the sight of Iris walking with what was essentially a large scarf draped around her shoulders and back made her feel cold to the bone.

"There's nothing in that grave," Iris said, startling the girl beside her a little.

But Rowena had already suspected as much. "I thought so."

A curious look went her way, though Iris soon looked back at the landscape she could walk through blindfolded. "It was our child, Ansgar's and mine."

'And yet it didn't even have a name?' She had a really bad premonition. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to..."

Suddenly, the black-haired woman stopped walking, making Rowena do the same. "What I'm about to tell you is something very personal, that is true," she said, "but I'm not sharing it out of trust or any sense of obligation I feel towards you, Lady Rowena. I am telling you because it will be the quickest way for you to understand that you must leave us alone."

Perplexed, the person addressed just stood there with a blank expression as Iris decided to continue her little walk.

"The baby had no name and no date of birth, simply because it was never born." As the Duke's daughter listened, she felt a shiver run through her body, knowing what might come next. "When I was younger, barely twenty-seven years old, I finally got pregnant after years of trying. We didn't want to endanger it, so I withdrew from work for the time being."

It sounded like a story she had heard a thousand times. A couple desperately wanted children, and they were finally going to be parents - until tragedy struck. And when it struck, it struck hard.

"But I was full of inspiration, so I couldn't just sit still. I went to the mountains while my husband was in the capital to do the Imperial Court's bidding."

She did not mean the mountains they were walking in, but a little further northwest of Eisenwacht, near the border. And for a while there fell silence.

For the Principality of Nathos had neither the power nor the means to properly bless its own lands, which meant that the outlying areas were crawling with low-grade Visitors, weaseling their way through the cracks in the protection.

Visitors always seemed to emerge from the very ground humanity walked on, but in reality a thin layer separated the world of the living from the World Beyond - the Surface.

'We don't know exactly what the Surface is, but it acts as an invisible blanket, a thin layer that separates this world from the World Beyond.' By blessing the ground on which the Surface lay, Visitors could be prevented from passing through, that's why holy ground was so important.

It took a while for Iris to sigh again. "I drew a couple of sketches while I was near the border, but I made sure I didn't cross it," she seemed to be trying to convince herself, but her tone gave away that she saw herself at fault, "I didn't know if it was safe, since Nathos didn't have many Priests to bless their grounds. But then there was this little girl screaming for help. I thought I would grab her and pull her to our side."

'Oh shit, I can see what happened.'

"It was a sweet girl, it broke my heart to see her like that, especially since I was about to be a mother myself. I didn't even have to do that much," she explained, as if attempting to justify her reaction, "I was very pregnant, so I wasn't fast. I walked over to her and took her hand, I didn't even see what she was so afraid of, but I couldn't think clearly at the time."

Rowena looked at her and frowned. "That's normal, you were pregnant after all."

Not to say that it made one stupid, but it did make one more emotional. Hormones were a curious thing.

"That's still not a good excuse. I touched her arm and it melted," you could see her face distort at the memory of the confusion she had felt, "it turned into a black... mass. I can't even describe it."

'Let me guess, it looked like a Muk?' It was probably a Grade 1. "It was a Shadow. They tend to mimic people they have taken Life Force from."

"So I've heard," Iris said, hiding her surprise that a young lady from the capital would know this.

They rarely thought about such things, even she hadn't known much about them before she was attacked. She wondered if it was because of her father, the warlord who spent his time fighting these monsters. Would he talk to his daughter about such a matter?

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

A few more steps were taken, wordless and aimless. They had probably circled the village twice, at least it felt that way to Rowena, but she didn't dare say anything.

"It didn't manage to kill me, as you can see," she said, but it was true, she didn't even miss her arm.

But that was why the younger woman didn't say anything. Rowena might not have known, but Celia did.

There was one thing in a human body that had more vitality than even an adult's heart. And that would be the Visitor's target, they go for what can give them the most - naturally.

"It went for the baby. Almost as though it didn't care about me at all. I dragged myself back to a safe distance. And I don't even know how I made it all the way back to the village, but I did." They stopped again and Iris looked down at her feet. "It wasn't even that big of a wound."

Being short, putting a hand on a tall woman's shoulder wasn't as easy as it might seem, but somehow Rowena managed it. At least for a second.

Iris gave a wry smile as she looked over at her, who had the same emotionless expression on her face as when she had shown up late in the evening without warning. Perhaps that was something unique to her.

"Can you imagine what it feels like when your child dies and turns to ashes inside you?"

"I cannot." She wouldn't lie about it.

"I couldn't describe it to you even if I wanted to. I was scratched, I thought, but it went deeper than that. Its claws had pierced the womb before I got back on holy ground."

'There it is,' Rowena thought, 'the laggy computer. How much text was gone when it finally caught up to reality?'

"It took the baby right out of my belly. When they tried to save me, I had to be kept alive by several Mana Stones, and they took everything. Parts of the womb itself were necrotic." She laughed, it even sounded a bit amused, but cold in nature at the same time. "No question if I would ever have another chance at a child, if that wasn't obvious."

"I am truly sorry for your loss."

Suddenly looking very tired, Iris let her shoulders sink. "I just want you to understand that I will never take up forging again, and neither will my husband, unless it is vital to the Empire." She was aware of the fact that their lord was her father.

Despite all the strange rumors surrounding this troubled child, she was still his only biological daughter and a spitting image of the late Duchess. No doubt her father would care for her if she begged him sufficiently.

If she was determined enough to return to them after being sternly denied, she would one day ask her father as well, she was sure.

That's what Iris had talked about with Ansgar the night before. That they might have to go against the Grand Duke, which they could hardly do. So she knew she had to convince her somehow when she saw her at the grave.

It wasn't that she didn't like her, in fact she had a lot of sympathy for the girl. She would have been almost the same age as the child who didn't have the chance to see the light of day. But that was also a reason for her not to give her any kind of weapon.

If nothing else, she shouldn't go around with a sword. What was it for anyway?

Rowena, on the other hand, was in quite a bit of jeopardy. She somehow understood now why they had only moved on the orders of the Crown Prince, but that wouldn't help her situation.

Forcing it wouldn't get her anywhere. 'That's like insulting the person who makes your coffee and risking some spit in it as a special service.' Besides, she didn't feel good about it either, that much was obvious.

The blade was important, but this was a losing game to her. "Alright, I understand your reason," she gave up her idea already, "I'll find someone else, even if they're not as knowledgeable as you would have been."

Relieved, Iris put a hand on her stomach out of habit. "Thank you, my lady."

There wasn't much more she could do. The sun was still up, of course, but she only nodded respectfully to Iris.

"I'll go find someone else, then." What else was there to say?

She had heard a story that made her remember a lot of things she hadn't thought she would hear again so soon.

Her gait became a tad wonky as she walked towards the forges near the mountain range. She felt a somewhat distraught, but there was nothing to be shocked about, was there?

'What is wrong with you, Rowena?' Sitting on the stump of a fallen tree, she realized something.

This was the first time she had ever called herself Rowena. Or was it the first time? It was certainly the first time she had noticed it. It meant that she had really gotten used to this lifestyle in such a short time.

Maybe she didn't need a weapon at all? "I mean, what for?"

With a shake of her head, a sigh and a hand massaging her forehead, she went through all the things she had done without thinking.

Spontaneously, she decided to go to the north and have a sword forged. Training with wooden swords in the basement, meditating, building up her Mana every day... she didn't want to do any of that.

She never wanted to do any of it.

Not wanting to do any of that was the reason she didn't just come out and say: "Hey, I can do magic, I'm too valuable to be sold into a political marriage." While that would certainly make some things easier, it would mostly make everything more complicated.

'But then they would at least allow me to fly on a Drake instead of riding the carriage everywhere.' It did sound tempting in that regard.

Her line of thought stopped right there as something pricked her neck. She jumped up and spun around, sweat collecting on her forehead and covering her entire back in an instant.

Lips quivering, lungs compressed, Rowena looked in the direction the dense wave of Mana had come from. "The graveyard...?" she whispered in disbelief.

The image of a woman smiling a hurtful smile flashed through her mind and her feet practically flew across the snow as she leaped up and climbed a tree to gain an advantageous position.

It took only a few seconds to reach her destination, and the Mana became even thicker. It was such a concentrated mess that she could barely breathe at this point. 'Are you okay?'

'I am,' she replied, not sure if she was telling the truth or not. Pan would probably know better than her anyway.

In reality, it didn't matter if she was okay or not. There was something she saw from up there that was far more important than that right now.

"Holy shit," she exclaimed under her breath. What she saw was a sight straight out of a horror movie.

There were holes in the ground. Lots of them. The whole thicket was lined with them.

If nature caused the ground to sink, the surface would follow in real time. However, if the hole was less than seven feet in diameter, it would never level at all, which was the problem Rowena was facing right now.

Because blessing the ground kept the Visitors from coming out of the overlapping Surface if the blessing was sufficient. If there was no ground overlapping the Surface, because the Surface was in the air above a small pit, then that place could let a Visitor through.

'Watching a Visitor spawn out of nowhere was like watching a bug in a video game.' A cruel loophole created by nature. 'But yeah, these are anything but natural.'

She saw about thirty opened up graves in front of her, working like an invitation for a flood of Visitors to come through. She had just left this place a while ago, they had to be freshly dug.

Someone was strong enough to dig into the frozen solid ground, and so fast that she hadn't even seen them run away.

The Surface would always gravitate to the ground level of the Earth and follow it as it sank or rose. Even at sea, it would stay at the bottom, under the water. Unless the hole was too small in diameter, in which case it would never level itself, but that fact was a beast of its own.

"The Surface" was a name revealed to humanity by the Numbered, who, unlike other Visitors, had free access to these layers.

After all, the Numbered were excluded from all forms of interaction with the physical world and felt no push or pull in any direction. However, they still couldn't elevate themselves far above the ground once they entered the realm of the living.

They couldn't climb over barricades, because no Visitor could rise far above the surface, and they couldn't descend below the Surface at all. "Dig a hole fast and you're golden," they had always told the people of Celia's world, though no ordinary person had ever been that fast.

'So… there are people who could actually survive like this, huh?'