"First things first, get back on the Continent." Rall's right hand reached inside his cloak. After fiddling for a couple of seconds, he produced a small purple gem. It was identical to the one once embedded in the winged guardian's chest, just miniaturized a hundred times. He rolled the crystal between his fingers, thoughtfully looking at the way it reflected his Fairylight's radiance. No, Tui's radiance.

"Ready?"

"You know it!" She answered excitedly.

Rall smiled. Through these hellish years, Tui had been the only thing keeping him sane. He could feel how happy she was to have returned, how relieved to still... be. Beyond that silver gate, that was more than one could hope.

On the backside of the boat, there was a vacant prism-shaped slot. Rall moved his hand close to it, and the gem flew in, embedding itself onto the dark metal. For a moment, nothing happened. Then he heard a rumble in the water, and purple energy crackled around the boat. It came alive.

Rall took a deep breath, then thought about moving forward slowly. The boat followed without delay, mirroring his will perfectly.

"I will never get used to this," Rall muttered after sighing.

"Hopefully, you won't have to."

He thought about accelerating towards the edge of the greyish mist, and so the boat did.

"Wait! Rall, what are those?" Tui asked, pointing towards the ghostly figures in the Fog.

"Oh, you can see them now that we are bound." He responded nonchalantly.

Tui flew closer to him as if seeking refuge from the approaching specters. "You are telling me that those things have been there the whole time?"

Rall slowed the boat down, stopping it a few meters away from the Fog. Several ghostly hands fell back in horror, instinctively keeping away from Tui's pale gleam. "I've seen them for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I thought everyone could. But the Fog was a painful topic for the adults, so I never asked."

He felt Tui calming down, especially after seeing the effect she had on the spectral entities. "What are they? Are those people? Ghosts? Souls?"

"I would love to know. The Church of Light might have the answer."

Tui's gaze rose to the dark sky while her voice tone lowered. "Right... the Church of Light..."

"I know what you are thinking, Tui, and you know I agree. We should not trust either side. Still, the soul contract remains. Unless we break it, we'll have to find the 'Goddess' and kill it."

Tui sighed and turned to Rall, her cheerful attitude slightly restored. "So, shall I do the honors?"

"Sure, milady," Rall responded with a teasing smile plastered on his face.

"Oh! Don't start again with that milady bullshit!" She said with her arms crossed in faked annoyance. "Always respect your elders!"

"I will, milady. I always respect old people!"

"Aaaaah, you are so annoying!" Both of them were smiling now.

Tui brought her hands to her heart. A violent wind rose around the pair, the boat rocking as the energy accumulated around Tui's immaterial figure. Even light could not escape her pull, and the area around her became unnaturally darker. When the phenomenon calmed down, the mermaid's arms opened wide as she shone with dazzling moonlight.

"Lighthouse~" she sang.

A dome of white light emerged around the boat, growing and growing until its surface reached the Fog, pushing it back and around it. It kept stretching further and further, displacing more and more of the Fog and the spectral figures within. When its growth finally stopped, the Lighthouse had become large enough to cover the village of Korn five times.

"Hmm, Tui? We are not 'there' anymore. I'll lower the output a bit." Seconds later, the Lighthouse shrank to ten meters in every direction around the boat.

"Hey! You promised not to touch the spells I cast," protested Tui.

"Ok, ok. You are right. It's just... we need to be a bit more discrete now."

"Says the guy who blasted open the guardian the second we came out. Do you think Ayol will be happy about it?"

"That damned snake can think whatever it wants. It was for Billy and the rest of the crew." As he said that, Rall clutched his right fist tightly, emitting white sparks that crackled around it. It was a strong, calloused hand, very distant from the soft child hand he had before the trials. "My only regret is that Conrad did not get his due. That liar died too quick."

"He too was under a soul contract, and his reasons were not that far from yours if I remember correctly..."

Rall released the tension in his fist, observing his palm as the last sparks of white magic dissipated. "I know. If I ever become like him, smite me down."

"At your orders, milord!" She said, giving him a cheeky tongue.

He smiled wrily at having his teasing technique reversed. "Let us depart now. We have wasted too much time in this forsaken place."

Rall willed the boat to move towards the Fog. Soon, they were traveling against the current at twice the speed as the Lady Veronica.

***

In a land of infernal fire, where oceans of volcanic magma extended to the horizon and dark ashen clouds covered the sky, a single tree still stood, with soot-colored leaves and pulsing bright white veins that covered its trunk. It was the last bulwark of life against the world of fire, its shadow an impossible holy place in the hellish landscape. A sound came from the tree, a low humming that tugged at the strings of one's soul, a calling that compelled one to persevere against the odds and win over death. Rall tried desperately to hold onto that word, but it constantly moved an inch too far from his reach, taunting him in his ignorance. He struggled, fighting against his weakness to get at least part of that holy message.

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

"F- F- Fo- For--"

"Land!" Tui shouted in Rall's mind, waking him up from his meditation with a startle. The young mage shook his head, trying desperately to remember that first syllable like it was the most precious of treasures. Seven years of meditation, and still he couldn't learn even the first part of his truename. Ayol had told him that his people would meditate for centuries to find a single word, some even a thousand years depending on its power. And he had at least four! So much potential in his truename, yet he would never learn it because of the limits of his mortality.

There was nothing he could do about it, so he took a minute to clear his mind, then opened his eyes. He put a hand in his warm black cloak and produced a meat jerky of some kind. Only two remained in the scarce food supply he had managed to bring from the other side. Luckily, it had been more than enough. As he brought the dried meat to his mouth and gnashed at it with his teeth, his eyes looked ahead.

Under the dark and cloudy sky was a tall cliff of white rock that extended for miles in both directions. It was so vast, bare of vegetation like a wall against the terrors of the Deep North.

"The Jade Cliffs of the Kaleera, the border to the Northern Tundra," Rall said, thinking back at the maps he had committed to memory with his father. "We have arrived at least three hundred kilometers northeast of Sturmwater."

Tui felt the young mage thinking hard on the geography in his memory. "Is that good?"

"Most likely yes, though it depends how far east we actually are. Best case scenario, it's three weeks on horseback to reach the Alcian border and one more for Telessia," he explained.

She could feel a point of uncertainty in his words and his thoughts. "And what is the worst case?"

"We'll have to fight through Aks'ala, the land of monsters..."

She turned around after hearing his words. Her eyes failed to hide the heavy burden underneath. Rall did not need their bond to know what she was thinking. "We would be very close to Motu Rere."

"A stone's throw away," she muttered to the horizon.

After the exchange, Rall willed the boat to speed up further. These waters were full of bad memories, and he was impatient to leave them behind. A silent half an hour later, they had finally reached the rocky coast.

The mage removed the purple gem from the boat, which turned off immediately. He put the crystal in a pocket inside his heavy coat, then stepped on the white stone surface of the reef.

Rall and Tui looked straight up at the edge of the rocky cliff. "That's a long way up," Tui said. "Do you need help to reach the top?"

"No. I've been stuck on that boat for five days now. A bit of exercise is what I need." After declaring his intentions, he pulled up the sleeves of his cloak, revealing defined muscles underneath. Many scars decorated his forearms like he had used them to protect himself from the claws of a wild beast. With his lean, strong one-meter and eighty centimeters tall body, his ash-blonde air, and emerald eyes, he looked like the exotic hero from a fairytale.

"Showoff," Tui said as she watched him stretch his sore muscles. "How I miss having a body..."

"That's something we should look into," he said between wrist and biceps stretches. "The Continent has a long history. Someone out there could've discovered a way to reverse your condition."

"Hey, if you speak like that, I will think that you don't want me here with you," she said teasingly.

"Oh no, milady. I would never say something like that!" He responded with a fake pout.

"There he goes again..."

He grinned, then turned to the cliff. He walked on the reef, all the while testing the rocky wall for good footholds and a decent climbing line. After ten minutes of search, he found a corner that satisfied his criteria.

"You should hide, Tui. From the moment we reach the top, we should be careful revealing our identities. A long time has passed, but I don't want to risk getting recognized at the wrong time."

She nodded, shrinking into a miniature ten-centimeter tall form that had been her original size when she had first fused with Rall's Fairylight. Then she dimmed her radiance and flew closer to her bond, effortlessly entering Rall's forehead.

The light mage turned to the white stone wall and started his climb, patiently yet expertly moving his body, one step at a time. If someone could see him now, that person would struggle to accept that Rall was a light mage. Physical prowess was not something most mages cared about, and most of them would have trouble even climbing a three-meter wall.

And yet, Rall had no trouble reaching the top of the cliff in under ten minutes. As he pulled himself up the edge, he sat on the stone ground, heaving lightly. The cold air had prevented him from sweating but had made breathing harder as his larynx burned from overuse. And yet, his focus was on the beautiful landscape laid bare before him.

It was a fractured land, with cliffs and ravines spreading through tens of kilometers as if the gods themselves had used it to test the cutting power of their mythical blades. Behind the irregular terrain were the phantom shapes of a distant mountain range, looming over the Tundra and barring its people from the southern parts of the Continent. On patches of pale dust and dry ground, some vegetation still survived against the horrors of the Fog. The most common were bushes of red flowers that decorated the scenery like pools of fresh blood - they were known as Laspillinae, the demonic rose. This plant's mysterious resistance to the Fog's withering effect had been the topic of debates in the alchemical community since the fall of the Great Kingdom of Theorzea. Alas, there were many decent theories, but none prevailed.

The booming sound of thunder broke Rall's observative pause. "A storm is coming," declared Tui. "We don't want to be outside when it happens."

The mage agreed with the mermaid's assessment and scanned the land in search of refuge. His eyes stopped when he saw a thin stripe of smoke originating somewhere behind a distant hill. Another thunder told Rall that the smoke was as good a hint as he would get.

Thus, he started running as fast as his worn-out handmade sandals permitted. Halfway towards the smoke, a cold drop of rain fell on his cheek, then another, then two more. Soon, he was running beneath a heavy downpour. Already soaked, he finally reached the hill. Nothing obvious came into view as the rain had already scattered the smoke that once lingered in the air. He was about to call on his powers for warmth and protection from the rainfall when suddenly he noticed the shimmer of a small fire.

He ran towards it, careful not to tumble down the wet surface of the hill, and, when he finally reached the bottom, he saw the remains of a small campfire. All around it, there were hundreds of strange-looking mounds in the dusty ground. While the terrain of the Tundra was uneven, those mounds were too regular to be of natural origin.

"DUCK!" Tui screamed in his mind.

Rall followed his companion's timely advice and felt an arrow whistle through the rain and right over his head. He turned around towards its origin, yet he did not find any.

"One step back!"

Once again, he did, and another arrow flew a hair's width from his nose.

"Rall, we should use our powers," said Tui in a strangely calm voice.

"No, wait a--"

"Dodge to the right!" She interrupted him.

He tumbled to the right with the agility of a martial fighter, then relaxed his stance and raised his empty hands to the sky.

"I am not an enemy!" He shouted in a broken version of the Tundran, a common tongue of the northern tribes. He could not speak many other words, but his father had taught him that phrase in almost fifty languages. Theodore once told Rall that knowing those precious few words had saved him at least twice during his younger days.

And this time, that investment paid off. A figure appeared from a hidden trapdoor on the side of one of the circular mounds. It was a pale old female with a curved back and a wrinkled face. Through the darkness of the rainfall, Rall noticed her pale skin and pointy ears. Then his gaze fell on hers, and he saw a pair of beady black eyes with bright red irises looking back at him, analyzing him with wizened insight. Two more individuals came from other mounds, each holding a tensed-up bow towards him. Their younger and stronger bodies shared many of the elder woman's distinguishing figures, and all three wore nothing but light tunics. It seemed that neither the cold nor the rain bothered them.

Rall's mind returned to his time with Lady Sharyah, a slaver primarily known in the Continent's underworld for her constant supply of young Snow Elves.

The old female elf waved a wrinkly hand, signaling the other two to lower their weapons. After they obediently followed her instructions, she looked at Rall while her hand pointed towards the open trapdoor whence she had come. He had no plans to refuse the hospitality, so he simply gave the woman a small bow of respect and headed towards the opening.