The creaking of the carriage wheels—
monotonous and insistent
—was the only sound slicing through the
heavy, viscous silence
inside.
Amanda sat opposite Randel. Her posture was relaxed, almost careless, yet her helmet was turned toward the window. Stripes of daylight, fighting their way through the clouds,
glided
across the polished golden surface without lingering. She was motionless, like an
ancient spirit
coldly surveying the bustle of mortals from the height of its eternal solitude. Grandeur and detachment radiated from her in waves.
Randel watched her.
(This woman… is she even “human” at all?)
There was nothing crude or primitive about her. Every line of her armor breathed
elegant, lethal beauty
. This being had just overturned his entire fate. And now he was carrying her to Eichenwald.
(But… how do you even speak to her? How do you address a seething volcano pretending to be a statue?)
He gathered his courage. His voice came out uncertain, slightly hoarse.
“In my lands… there are breathtaking views, my lady.
Especially in the north, among the mountains. When the sun sets, the sky turns into a
sea of molten gold
…”
Amanda didn’t move. Didn’t answer. The silence
rang
louder, grew even
heavier
.
(…Failure. Complete disregard.)
The carriage jolted over a rut. Randel’s heart
did the same
. Her gaze—he
felt
it, even without seeing her eyes—was fixed on the world outside the window, as if rejecting his very existence.
He remembered a sensation from childhood: trying to talk to an unmoving statue. But her silence, the
atmosphere of being drawn far, far away
, stirred something deep inside that he had kept locked for years. It wasn’t awe. It was a hunger for
conversation as equals
. For words with someone who had seen the world beyond palace walls and tactical maps.
“May I… ask one question?” He dropped ceremonial etiquette. His voice still trembled, but now it carried
resolve.
The golden helmet
turned
. Slowly, from the window—toward him. An unseen gaze
fell upon him
with almost physical weight, as though the air in the carriage
thickened.
“You have already asked one question, Duke,” her voice was even, devoid of inflection, like the surface of a dead lake. “But… I will allow another.”
Randel drew a breath, staring straight into the blind mask.
“Who are you?
And why? Why did you save
me
?
You said, ‘The world would be duller.’ But that isn’t everything. There is a deeper reason… isn’t there?”
She
exhaled.
A faint, barely audible sound. In it one could hear
weariness
,
boundless loneliness
, the weight of countless years.
“Randel. I already told you.
Names are merely cages.”
She fell silent, as if
weighing
how much truth he could bear.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“If you need a label so badly… consider me one of the last supreme archmagi still walking this continent. The final guardian of the ancient forest. One who was here long before your kings and empires, when the trees were young and magic flowed through the earth’s veins like blood.”
Randel’s breath
caught
. A supreme archmage. Childhood fairy tales. Yellowed pages of manuscripts he had once flipped through in his youth with a condescending smirk.
(Priests’ and poets’ inventions… or so I thought.)
“Incredible…” His whisper was not denial, but the sound of
colliding with impossible reality
. “So you… you are…”
“Everything you read in books,” Amanda interrupted, and for the first time a
bitter, caustic irony
crept into her voice, “is nothing more than a
faded echo
. A roar reduced to a distorted whisper. Yes, Duke. I am that very ‘fairy tale’ your lineage has already managed to forget.”
(…She’s real.)
“I keep my distance from people,” her voice grew colder, sharper, like a winter wind. “I have watched their ‘progress’
gnaw at the roots
of this world.”
(What…? Progress? The roots of the world?)
Randel’s thoughts
tangled
, finding no foothold.
“I do not save every lost prince who stumbles into trouble,” her helmet tilted slightly toward the window. “I could have watched them hack you to pieces with the same indifference I feel when a leaf falls. Most of you are merely
fleeting sparks
flickering in a long night.”
(Sparks…?)
“But your spark…” her voice
paused
for a heartbeat, “…could kindle a blaze. Or plunge everything into darkness. That is my calculation, Randel. No mercy involved.”
Those words—cold, merciless—should have crushed him. Instead, the opposite happened. Something
flared
hot inside him.
(This isn’t a deity’s whim. This is strategy. And I… am her key.)
His mind
boiled
.
(Supreme mages… they exist. She is real. She… protects the world? From us? And I am a ‘spark’? Because of my bloodline? My reforms? Or… my rage?)
Questions collided, spawning new riddles. His thoughts
blazed.
He stared at her—at that
unshakable radiance
—trying to discern even a hint of vulnerability.
(…In vain.)
And then a
new, contradictory feeling
pierced him.
(She… is beautiful.)
Not the beauty of court ladies—calculated, draped in silks and elaborate coiffures. Hers was the beauty of a
perfectly honed blade
, of a
thundercloud on the horizon
—scorching, deadly, breathtaking in its perfection.
(I’m a fool.)
He had brushed off beauties who threw their hearts at his feet. And he thought
she
might see a man in him?
(Laughable!)
He was merely a tool. A grain of sand on the scales of fate.
Yet in that moment he felt not despair, but
burning curiosity.
(What does she see in this grain of sand?)
He didn’t notice how intently he was staring. It was not a reverent gaze. It was the gaze of a commander
studying a new, unknown weapon.
Penetrating, analytical.
Suddenly she turned her helmet toward him.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Duke?”
Her voice was quiet. And…
soft ?
The steel-cold edge had vanished, replaced by faint, weary curiosity.
(…What is this mood?)
Randel’s heart
lurched.
That shift in her tone struck him
harder than any display of power.
It
disarmed
him.
(What… is happening?)
He tried to gather his scattered thoughts, but felt
warmth spreading
across his cheeks—insistent, against his will.
“Forgive me, I…” he faltered,
losing his usual rhythm
, all his normal confidence gone. “I’m only trying to understand. To glimpse the person inside the legend. And to grasp the weight of the responsibility you have placed on me.
You called me a ‘spark.’ But what if… what if that spark burns the hand that saved me? What then?”
She listened in silence. Her helmet
tilted
slightly to the side, as if in thought.
“There is always risk,” came the quiet answer. “But I prefer to take risks rather than merely watch. For now.”
(…For now?)
A new whirlwind of thoughts flared in Randel’s chest, mingled with that strange, unsettling warmth. The conversation had only just begun, but the rules of the game had already changed. He was no longer speaking to an impersonal force. He was speaking to
someone
. And that someone had just cracked open a door into her abyss—and allowed him to peer inside.