Right back to it.

After barely more than a day in the ancient, vertical city that had more alleyways than it did buildings with less than three stories, we were already on our way out. It was already time for us to leave Ord. Once again, this was it.

As all of the knights filed together in their organized groups in front of Ord’s gate, I couldn’t help but smile a little. Even with the slight weight weighing down my eyelids, I couldn’t help but hold my head high.

Despite the monotony and frustration that was getting every member of the legion into whatever position Lady Amelia had designated for them, I didn’t mind it. The sea of metal armor and shouted orders rolled over me with ease. I just sat back and moved where I was supposed to after everything else had been taken care of. That was all I had to do, and it was blissfully simple.

Well, that and making sure Kye didn’t rip somebody’s head off.

When we got back into formation, though, it felt a little strange. It felt almost exactly the same as before. The same when we’d left Norn to venture into the mountains. Aside from the unrefined road under my feet, I could barely pick out the differences.

Which, all things considered, was strange. Because there was a lot that had changed.

When we’d entered Ord, our entire legion had been tired. The knights had all been walking for days in heavy metal armor at that point. The scouts had all been relentlessly shifting and scouring the land around us. And in the backing party… Well, we hadn’t done as much as other groups in the legion. But that hadn’t meant our exhaustion had been any less pronounced.

A day in Ord, though, had solved that. Dawn hadn’t been cracked for a whole hour as we readied to depart, but nobody complained about that. We were all well-rested. Both our legion and the reinforcements Ord had decided to offer.

Another change, I remembered. Before arriving in Ord, we’d had a powerful legion that would’ve been able to put down most enemies in a pure show of force. And now… it was even stronger.

We’d gained at least two dozen additional fighters from Ord—ones draped in a lighter, darker plate that was lined in black. As far as I knew, they would form almost a second main section of our legion. One that would march ahead of even lady Amelia so that they could guide us through the mountains to come.

All in all, our legion had gone from strong to downright oppressive. And that was only good for us. In addition to the extra manpower, our Vimur contact hadn’t lied. After everything he’d explained to me the night before, Ray hadn’t shied away from the help he’d promised.

He had helped us in a number of ways that, honoring his words, didn’t put him in any direct danger. Though, none of us were quite able to complain about it anyway. He’d taken the time over the course of the morning to enchant dozens of pieces of gear for our legion.

For the most important members—including Lady Amelia, her immediate group, and the leaders of Ord’s supporting party—he’d made their armor fire-resistant. He’d imbued the metal with energy whose sole job was to repel unneeded heat.

And he’d also given us the failsafe. The escape routes, as he’d called it. Small metal objects that were easily strapped to the waists of the knights that had received them.

But while they looked small and unimportant, I knew better. Hopefully the whole legion did. A complex spell that had the ability to teleport potentially large swaths of the legion away from danger was nothing to shrug off, after all.

That simple addition had given us a whole hell of a lot of confidence.

The worry of getting trapped somewhere to die wasn’t as serious when we had the opportunity to teleport away with just some mental effort.

My fingers rolled over the map in my pocket. The smooth parchment brushed over my skin and steadied my breathing. I held onto it, reminding myself of everything I had. Everything I had gained in the past few months. What I had to lose.

But I didn’t let it scare me. I used it to motivate me instead.

My eyes flicked up to watch Kye roll her eyes at another knight.

No, I thought. There was no way I was losing it. There was no way I was losing any of the things I’d worked so hard to gain. The beast had cursed me with a new life, and I’d pulled it together by the bootstraps. The world would be damned before I gave it up again.

The smile at my lips grew wider.

As soon as he’d finished his work for us, Ray had scrambled off to go rest somewhere. Probably in the same tavern that he’d all but rented out for as long as he wanted.

A chuckle bubbled out of my throat. I really had to give the man credit. Even if what he’d told me didn’t make a lick of sense, he’d stayed true to his word. Even if his favor with Marc was tainted by the blood of knights, it had still come to help us. It made sure that less blood would be shed on our side. It made us ready.

Plus, whether deliberately or not, he’d made me ready too. After how blatantly Ray had pointed out friction between me and the white flame, we’d been forced to figure things out. We’d been forced to realize that no matter what we wanted, we were together. Our identity was confusing and a little muddled, but we’d manage so far.

We’d done so thus far, at least.

I sighed, my fingers relaxing as the white flame flickered in agreement. With a reaffirmation of my smile, I let the sunlight warm against my face. I let it remind me of the time.

Because as I stood there, I still knew I hadn’t slept a wink. The rest of the night had been as restless as before. The only difference had been the absence of the white flame’s antics. It hadn’t been dominated by a reserved annoyance that I held for the presence stuck in my head. Instead, we’d… come to an understanding, of sorts.

A breath of amusement escaped my nose. I still didn’t truly understand what had happened, but we felt fluid now. We felt more together—like we’d bonded a little more. The white flame had ceased taking memories and trying to combine them. And I’d ceased pushing it back anytime it rose in interest.

We were making progress, I told myself with the same beaming smile on my face.

“What’s gotten into you?” somebody asked as they glanced back. Blinking, I saw Kye smirking at me with one eyebrow raised.

The smile on my face didn’t fade even an inch. I chuckled. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.” The white flame flickered in amusement, but I felt its energy still seeping in with mine.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Kye said. She kept up her smirk, but her eyebrows arched in subtle concern. “It probably wasn’t the best night to skip sleep.” She cocked her head toward the legion ahead of us. “With our whole ‘marching to the temple of a dragon’ and all.”

I chuckled again, my smile unwavering. In the corner of my eye, I saw Fyn’s cheerful expression regard me with some interest. I spared him half a wave.

“It probably wasn’t,” I admitted, draping a hand over the hilt of my blade. “But in all honesty, I feel pretty good regardless.”

“You feel pretty delirious,” Kye corrected. She stifled a short laugh. “Were you really up the entire night?”

I nodded, tilting my head. “Basically all of it, yeah.”

“If you were up the whole time,” she started, intent flashing in her eyes, “then why didn’t you wake me?”

My grin widened as I watched the huntress. She laughed a little more before turning around and showing me only the brown bag over her shoulder. Before I could respond, though, another noise was flooding the air.

Up ahead, Lady Amelia was shouting again. Relaying orders and positions to the knights that could hear her. I only perked my ears for a few seconds before tuning her out completely. I’d heard it all before.

So instead, I kept up my smile and walked next to Kye before leaning in.

“Waking you wouldn’t have been a good idea,” I whispered, causing her smirk to waver. “You’re not the most pleasant person when you’re sleep deprived.”

Kye’s brows dropped as she turned to me. Her eyes bored into me with such exaggerated disappointment that I had to fight back a fit of laughter. That laughter faded, though, when her hand started reaching for the arrows in her quiver.

“Yeah, sure,” Kye started. “You—”

But I never got to hear what quip she’d been ready to send my way. Instead, I was rewarded with an earful of En’s approach toward us. As the frustrating knight still wearing a smug expression walked up, Kye didn’t bother trying to finish her sentence.

Behind him, Fyn stifled a chuckle while leaning back on his heel. As my eyes met with his, he cocked an eyebrow and flicked his gaze between me and Kye knowingly. A thin smile rose back to my lips.

“Are you two ready for this?” En asked. My good mood didn’t stop me from rolling my eyes. “Because I—”

“–and this is it!” Lady Amelia shouted from up ahead. Her tone rattled up in intensity and drowned out whatever cocky thing En had been saying. “Ord’s fronting party will lead us to our destination.” A moment of silence fell as she paused. “Now we march.”

After her command, none of us wasted any time. Much to En’s chagrin, we all filed back into our correct positions to get the legion properly moving.

The sea of commotion died down into a whisper. Our legion of oppressive force lurched forward. The safety of civilization faded away once again. And we marched.

Right back to it.

---

In my experience, the most significant things always came on too suddenly.

Rath’s temple was no different.

A dry swallow tumbled down my throat as I stared. My body moved on automatic, marching forward at the same pace we’d been walking for the entire day. But I didn’t pay attention to the pace, or the rocky mountain path under me. I couldn’t.

We had arrived.

Sitting in the mountain directly ahead of us was Rath’s temple. Even with the way the shades of grey in the stone melded together, it was unmistakable. The molded stone brick walls at its front. The carved-out mountain path that wound up to the top of it like a red carpet. The torches burning with soft red flames that were recognizable even from such a distance away.

We had arrived.

And even though we were more than a hundred paces away from the base of the path, it felt intimidating. It felt too large. Too significant. Too imposing. The longer I stared at it, the more it felt like something that shouldn’t have had any right to exist.

But it did.

Even with all of the buildup and preparation we’d done, our legion felt puny. The dozens upon dozens of trained knights, scouts, and fighters that we’d brought along were almost specks of dust compared to the mountain we were about to storm up.

A makeshift stone structure built directly into the side of a lone mountain surrounded by rough rock—somehow, it felt unexpected. Even though it fit almost exactly to our predictions, it felt different. The conceptions I’d held in my head hadn’t been able to hold a candle to the reality of it.

It brought all of the worries back. Not just for me, but for all of us.

As we continued marching simply out of the habit we’d formed, nobody talked. Nobody dared break the natural ambience of the world around us. It was like we each feared some incomprehensible retribution if we made even one wrong move.

So we didn’t. We marched straighter than we’d done for the entire trip. And we kept our mouths shut.

The expressions on the knights around me were all different. All slightly tailored to whatever kind of surprise they were going through. Rath was a myth, after all. Her place of slumber was supposed to be a matter of fantasy. It was the kind of thing warped and shaped by our minds into whatever we felt fit.

And now that it was real, none of those conceptions really lined up. Not truly, at least.

It was hard to accept, I supposed. Though, it wasn’t like we’d expected anything else. We’d all known what we were doing when we’d signed up. Or, at least we’d known the possibilities. But there hadn’t been any doubt about our final destination for days now.

We were ready, I told myself. I had to repeat it over and over. Each time the thought spawned, the white flame latched onto it and aided its passage. Part of me assumed it was trying to make me feel better—but it could’ve been using the reassurance for its own benefit as much as mine.

Even the fractured, magical soul living inside my consciousness wasn’t immune to fear.

We were ready, though. I knew that to be true deep down. With everything we’d done—everything we’d trained for and prepared, I had trouble believing anything could have stood against us. We were as ready as we were ever going to be. But for some reason, that truth didn’t give me as much confidence as it would’ve years back. I didn’t feel the same way as when I’d been a knight for my kingdom.

This was different, I ventured. I was different, I supposed.

In the grand scheme of things, we had as much advantage as we could ask for, too. If Rath’s rise was inevitable either way, we were fortunate that we knew about it. We were fortunate that we had found the location of her temple. Fortunate that it was still in the process of being built. We were fortunate that we’d found out before it had all become too late.

I was fortunate myself, even. I was fortunate that I’d agreed to come—I still thought sitting in the unknown would’ve been worse than facing it head-on. I was fortunate for the company I’d gathered to do it. Fortunate for everything that I’d learned along the way.

Yet even with all that… I couldn’t blame myself for not feeling all that lucky.

But it didn’t matter, I told myself. We’d prepared as much as we could so that it didn’t matter whether luck was on our side. We would succeed through will, force, and determination. We would succeed because we had to.

We had a responsibility.

Even without the mother of destruction, her cult was dangerous enough. They’d spread their operation throughout almost all inhabited places of the mountains and had been wreaking destruction ever since.

They were even more dangerous now than when Keris had infiltrated Norn those three months ago. And we were marching directly toward their base of operations. Even if Rath wasn’t there—even if she was a myth anyway, we had to deal with them.

Though that didn’t make the dread any lighter.

With a sigh, I shook my head. My eyes didn’t move from the temple above. They didn’t move from the winding stone path we were about to risk far too many lives on. And even though I knew it was necessary—that if we didn’t make our stand here then there would be even more horror in the future—I couldn’t find any words.

None of us could find words. It didn’t make sense for us to speak anyway. All we would be doing was repeating ourselves.

“Shit…” Kye said from beside me as the front of our legion started up the temple’s path.

Well, almost none of us could find words, I thought. A smile tugged at my lips as I watched Kye gawking. I had trouble believing she had anything more concrete to say.

As the marching slowed and the mountain loomed over us, I tried to calm myself. I knew it was useless. I wasn’t able to push away the doubts and the fear no matter what.

But the time for rumination was over. The time of waiting was over. This was it.

Now was the time to climb.