In the morning, Thork departed as planned. With a knight's ease, he rode the fastest horse he could find in the village and headed towards the city of Telessia with the haste of someone who knew that hundreds of people were counting on his success. Seeing their chief's back becoming smaller and smaller, many prayed to whatever gods they knew that this winter would not end in tragedy.

Others looked at the disappearing figure with a sinister smirk.

Nevertheless, activity soon resumed in the village of Korn - the life in the countryside was infamous for the grinding routine it entailed.

Meanwhile, a boy was waking up on the floor. Rall scratched his eyes as he noticed fidgets of morning light penetrating the small cracks around the barred window of his room. At some point during his training, deep meditation had faded into sleep, his Fairylight still lingered over his body, emitting a golden gleam. 'It seems... slightly bigger,' he thought while bringing the speck of luminescence closer for inspection. But then he discarded the thought - there was no way just a couple of hours of training would have a visible effect. Still, instincts told him that his Fairylight had indeed grown. 'Let's hope you don't become too big, or I wouldn't know where to fit you!' Then he lowered the light's intensity and recalled it in his body to hide it. 'It's dangerous that I fell asleep during training... what if someone sees me,' he thought, 'as long as it's Dori, it is still fine, but what happens if it's someone else... the killer could still be around'. Once again, his mind returned to the previous day - the image of Theodore's Fairylight slowly disappearing over his bloodied corpse was still fresh.

Rall shook his head. His father wouldn't have wanted to become a burden on him. The boy got up and reached for the scroll. Today he would memorize its contents!

The Ancient Code was an anomaly in many ways. One of its properties was that it required little to no effort to be memorized. A true master of the Code would be able to quickly inscribe the specific patterns that formed a page in their mind, then perfectly recall them at any time. Still, understanding a page's content required the reader to 'read' it. But when combined with the staggering amount of information that one coded page could contain, the Ancient Code became the best medium ever created to exchange secrets.

In the past, many avid sorcerers would search for ancient coded tomes about arcane magic or even for the grimoires of famous archmages, then burn them once they had learned their contents. Thus the Ancient Code was slowly forgotten by all but the most elite circles in the world of magic. As for how his father had come across it, Rall had no clue.

During his lessons with Theodore, he was given several coded pages to practice memorization on, all containing different types of valuable information. From detailed maps of the continent to books about etiquette in various nations or even manuals about exotic languages, Rall had slowly absorbed them all morphing, unbeknownst to him, into a little moving encyclopedia. Even then, before this scroll, his father had never taught him anything about magic. Of course, he knew the difference between light magic, arcane sorcery, and the dark art - the first precious like water in a desert, the second more common but always highly valued, the last prohibited and seen as taboo.

It took Rall six hours to memorize the scroll. During the process, Dorothy had checked on him a couple of times to see how he was feeling. She had even brought him bread and warm milk since he had skipped a couple of meals. "A boy needs to eat a lot to stay healthy and grow strong," she had said. Rall was not used to someone caring for him so much, his father a more stern and cynical figure. He knew that Theodore cared for him a lot since he spent so much of his free time teaching him, but he had never really heard him say it. Still, he loved his father.

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When he finally finished with memorization, he hid the scroll under a loose plank on his bedroom's floor. Then, he closed the window to let the darkness consume the room, and, once more, he sat cross-legged to resume his meditation.

***

At the same time, in a dimly lit chamber carved out of dark opaque crystals, a curvaceous cloaked figure was dissecting the body of a deformed monstrosity. The figure moved with the elegance of an expert, cutting the rough skin of the creature without spilling any blood on its silvery silk cloak. On its left stood a small altar, which the figure used to hold the organs it was carving out of the unmoving body.

One stood out among the rest, laid in a golden bowl emitting a ghastly green light - everyone would recognize it as a heart, a black heart big as a human head. Although the creature was dead, its heart was still beating faintly.

Another figure, this time shrouded in a dark aura, rose from the shadows, put one knee on the floor, and lowered its head in deference.

Its raspy, distorted voice broke the silence in the room. "It's done."

The silver-cloaked figure did not seem to react as it kept up its work without interruption. After a minute of silence, it cleaned its instruments with a towel, then methodically put everything back in order. When it deemed the cleanup operations to be flawless, the figure turned to face the shadow.

A melodic feminine voice came from the silvery individual. "How did it happen?"

"A quick death, painless. No traces were left. I could not find the necklace." The raspy voice responded.

The figure nodded. A pair of exotic emerald eyes shone behind the cover of the rigid pearly mask that hid the rest of her facial features. "What about the boy?" She asked.

"I have observed him for a month - he does not have a Fairylight. As ordered, I let him live." The raspy voice answered.

She nodded again, her eyes betraying a hint of relief before returning to their orderly cold state.

"That said," the raspy voice continued, "without the light mage, the village they were hiding in is left unprotected from the Fog. The boy might be in danger."

She paused in thought. "It is a dangerous world. I have done enough for the boy, just sparing his life. What he does with it is not my problem."

"Enough with this matter," she resumed, "take this heart and bring it to His Highness."

"Yes, Milady." The figure disappeared and reappeared with its hands around the golden bowl, the black organ still beating with faint signs of 'life' - then it disappeared again, leaving behind traces of black smoke that lingered in the air for a couple of seconds.

The cloaked woman stood still for a while as she turned towards the emptied disfigured corpse. Then she shook her head. The boy hadn't inherited the gift - he did not matter anymore. It was finally time to move on.

***

Ten days passed. The routine continued like normal in the village of Korn. During the weekly gathering held by the huntsmen, Bellar Wallyben had tried to fill in the gap left by Thork with the help of those faithful to him. He had screamed about the Fog, how it could come at any time, and how they needed to prepare a sacrifice in advance. Though mostly dismissed him, the climate of uncertainty felt through the village laid fertile ground to the blacksmith's fearmongering.

While the gathering was happening, Dorothy was giving birth, assisted by a couple of experienced women and their daughters. Rall had listened to the process from his room, otherwise unable to concentrate on his training through the painful wails of Dorothy. Still, his progress in the last ten days had been outstanding. He had felt his control of his Fairylight drastically improve, and he could now remain in meditation for five hours straight without falling asleep.

One day he had also tried using Lighthouse with decent success. Casting the spell had not been hard since it was the easiest a light mage could learn. The problems were range and duration. In the past, his father had protected the village from the Fog's relentless assault with a dome of light that spanned one kilometer in all directions and kept it up for three straight days. Rall had finally begun to understand the gap between him and his father.

Another scream had echoed from downstairs, followed by the piercing cry of a newborn. Rall had heard the women congratulate Dorothy and telling her that she had done a great job. The daughter of one of the women had said something about Thork not being there - she had been kicked out of the house by her mother, who had hurriedly apologized in her stead. Of course, Dorothy was too gentle to care about something like that. Instead, once her breath returned to a manageable rhythm, she had called for Rall.

When he had entered, she had beckoned him to come closer so he could see her baby. "Rall, this is Sarah. Sarah, this is Rall. I hope you two can be like brother and sister in the future."

Rall had looked at little Sarah, who had her eyes closed in the comfort of her mother's arms. Right then and there, he had renewed his promise to protect her. He would train hard so that this pure small creature would never have to know the horrors of the Fog.

He would soon learn that the world does not wait for anybody.