They packed up what the cave had left them, cores heavy in the bag between them, and started back the way they'd come.
Fifteen goblin cores. Not enough. I want more.
He found himself lagging a step behind Aria without quite meaning to, eyes drifting toward the deeper stretches of forest still unexplored on either side of the trail.
"Gonna scout the surroundings," he told her. "I'll call if I need you."
She paused, not even bothering to turn around fully. "You're not actually scouting, are you?"
"...What gave it away?"
"You look way too happy for scouting." She smiled without looking up from adjusting the pack straps. "Go on. I'll wait here."
He left her with the bulk of their loot and headed off alone, greed doing most of the steering.
***
He hadn't gone far before a sound cut through the trees that had nothing to do with anything he'd killed today — a shriek, high and chittering, followed by a voice, human, shouting something lost to distance.
He was moving before he'd decided to.
He heard Aria's footsteps catching up a few minutes later, already having abandoned the loot rather than let him run into something alone.
The ground sloped down toward what had to be the lake Emma's posting vaguely mentioned, water glinting through the treeline ahead — and scattered across the last stretch before it, two scorpions already lay dead, thick spikes of raw earth still jutting clean through one, the other split open by something that looked like a clean sword strike.
Someone's already been fighting hard, before whatever's happening now.
The clearing itself, when he broke into it, was carnage. Trees splintered at odd angles, snow-dusted ground churned dark with blood, and at the center of it three more scorpions — all easily the size of a cart — circling a man in dented plate armor whose shield arm was shaking, stance gone ragged.
Kaelid didn't slow down. He closed the last stretch at a dead run, ducked under a wild tail-strike, and drove Mercy into the joint of the nearest scorpion's leg. The man's shield came around in a heavy, desperate arc a half-second later, catching a second scorpion's pincer mid-strike.
"Behind you!" Aria shouted, already loosing — the arrow took the third scorpion through one of its eight eyes as it lunged for the man's exposed flank.
That left two, and between the three of them it didn't take long to finish it — Kaelid driving his blade through the base of the wounded one's skull, the last staggering scorpion pinned against a tree by the man's shield just long enough for Kaelid to close it out clean.
Silence settled over the clearing. The man dropped to his knees, hauling his helmet off with hands that weren't entirely steady. Short auburn hair, lime-green eyes, a face gone pale under the dirt and exhaustion.
"Thank you," he managed. "Three of them. I don't— another minute, and I don't think—"
He didn't finish the thought, already scrambling toward two figures slumped against a fallen log.
***
Up close, it was clear they weren't just unconscious — dark, spreading veins branching out from twin puncture wounds, one arm swollen tight around a sting, a matching mark higher on the other's leg.
Eric dug through his pack with shaking hands, came up with a small glass bottle of something golden and thick, and fed half to each of them in turn.
"Come on," he muttered. "Come on, come on—"
The dark veins began to recede after a few minutes, color returning, breathing evening out into something that looked like real sleep instead of whatever it had been before.
Eric sat back on his heels, only then seeming to register the two people who'd just saved his life were still standing there.
"I'm Eric," he said, voice rough. "Thank you. Might I ask your names? And which city you're out of?"
"Kaelid. This is my partner, Ar—" He glanced over to find the space beside him empty. Aria had slipped off without a word sometime in the last few minutes.
Where'd she go?
"We're out of Avalon," he said anyway, half his attention still on the treeline. "Came out here for a goblin job."
Eric's face fell slightly. "Ah. My party's out of Fort Raichas." He glanced at his two companions. "We were scouting this stretch of forest — took a job hunting raptors, further out than we probably should've gone. Eleven of them down before these five found us instead." He shook his head, some of the exhaustion catching up with him again just talking about it. "They'll need real rest before they can travel. I don't suppose... would you stay nearby a while? At least until I know they're steady."
Aria reappeared right on the tail of the question, pack slung heavy over one shoulder — the loot they'd abandoned on the trail when the shrieking started, hauled the half-mile back rather than left for something else to find.
"Wasn't about to let fifteen goblin cores just sit out there," she said, dropping it beside the fire, a little out of breath. "What'd I miss?"
Kaelid glanced at her. Her answer was written plainly enough across her face regardless of what she'd missed.
"We can do that," he said.
***
They made camp where they stood. Eric carried the elf girl a short distance to flatter ground, and Kaelid took the boy, who didn't weigh much more than himself despite being taller.
Between the three of them conscious, they got a fire going. Eric lasted maybe twenty minutes past that before exhaustion won outright, asleep sitting upright until Aria eased him down properly.
"I'll take first watch," she said, settling in with December across her knees. "You should sleep."
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Should. Won't, probably. The old restlessness hadn't actually gone anywhere — if anything, the interrupted scouting trip nagged at him worse now than it had before the fight.
"Gonna look around a little more," he said. "Won't go far."
Aria gave him a look that said she didn't believe that for a second, but didn't stop him either. "Don't die. I'm not explaining that to Emma."
***
He didn't get far before the trees opened without warning into a clearing that didn't belong to the rest of the forest at all.
Moonlight fell into it clean and unbroken, an ivory tree standing tall and pale at the center, leaves the color of amber even in the dark. Violet lilacs ringed the base of the trunk in a perfect, unnatural circle, glowing faintly silver where the moon touched them.
This isn't normal, is it? I should probably leave before something bad happens.
He reached out anyway, and pressed his palm flat against the bark.
Something looked back — a presence gathering itself out of the moonlight between the leaves, until a shape stepped free of the tree that was somehow both part of it and entirely separate.
A unicorn. White as fresh snow, eyes like molten gold.
It has to be at least Apex rank. Maybe higher. And it's just... standing there. Looking at me.
The unicorn lowered its head. Its horn cracked away with a sound like a bell struck once, and it nosed the broken piece toward him across the grass.
He knelt and picked it up, warm in his hands in a way that made no sense out here in the cold. When he looked up again, the unicorn was already gone.
He sat with that a long moment before he trusted his legs enough to stand, tucked the horn into his pack, and started back the way he'd come — only to find, once he actually made it back to camp, that considerably more time had passed than it should have.
***
The fire had burned down to almost nothing. Aria was still upright, still on watch, though the look she gave him when he stepped back into the clearing was somewhere between relief and genuine anger.
"You've been gone eight hours," she said, low so as not to wake anyone. "I was about to go looking for a body."
"...It didn't feel like eight hours."
"Well it was." She rubbed at her eyes, clearly running on fumes herself. "Wherever you went, next time you tell me before you go somewhere time apparently doesn't work right."
Before he could figure out how to explain that he hadn't known either, movement stirred behind her — the two rescued strangers, finally waking.
***
The boy came up first, wincing as he tested his leg, crimson eyes catching the last of the firelight in a way that made them look almost lit from within.
"You're not one of ours," he said, looking at Kaelid.
"No," Eric said, stirring awake at the voices. "This is Kaelid, and that's Aria — they're the reason any of us are still breathing."
The girl sat up a moment later, silver-white hair falling loose around her shoulders, and when her eyes finally focused properly, one blinked clear to reveal a mismatched pair — purple on the left, green on the right — her ears tapering to a faint point, different from the long, sharp ones on the elf he'd seen haggling over produce his first day in Avalon, but an echo of it all the same.
Kaelid forgot, for one full second, how to say anything at all.
Huh. Well. That was new.
It wasn't like anything he had words for yet, just a sudden, total certainty that whatever this feeling was, it hadn't existed in him five seconds ago and wasn't going away anytime soon.
"Thanks, Eric," she said, voice still thick with sleep, glancing at the man beside her before her gaze drifted, curious, toward the two strangers. "I'm glad you're safe."
"I'm Kaelid," he managed, a beat later than was probably normal. "This is Aria."
"Ana," she said, studying him back with the same open curiosity, apparently unaware of whatever had just happened to him internally.
Get it together. She just woke up from being poisoned. Now is not the time.
He got it together, mostly, though it took more effort than he'd ever admit out loud.
***
Tatsuya's attention snagged almost immediately on the sword at Kaelid's hip. "Is that a Jian?"
"Yeah. Had it made not too long ago. Her name's Mercy." He offered it over.
Tatsuya took the blade with something close to reverence, turning it over in the firelight. "A fine sword. Mine's called Moonlight. Two enchantments." He launched into it without waiting to be asked — [Sever], ignoring most defenses outright, and [Nightfall], sharpening his senses to a razor's edge after dark.
"Mercy's got one — [Density]. Lets me shift her weight at will."
Tatsuya's whole face lit up, and Kaelid decided then and there exactly how to manage this particular new acquaintance.
This guy's a complete sword freak. Somehow I already know exactly how to handle him.
Ana had gone quiet, gaze catching on something poking out of the top of Kaelid's pack.
"Curious about that?" he asked.
She nodded, silent.
So he told them everything — the goblin cave, the fight, wandering off alone chasing something he couldn't fully explain, the clearing, the ivory tree, the unicorn stepping free of the light. The horn breaking away clean, offered rather than taken.
When he finished, nobody spoke for a moment.
"So... will you make a sword out of it?" Tatsuya asked eventually.
"Probably. Not sure I've got the gold for it right now, though."
"You'll need more than gold," Tatsuya said. "A capital city, not a fort city. Real forges."
"It's fine. I'll save up." Wouldn't be much use to me right now anyway — I'd need to have reached Enlightenment myself before I could even swing whatever comes out of that.
"Let me come with you," Tatsuya said, before Kaelid had finished the thought. "When you go to forge it. I'll travel with you." A faint grin. "Want to see what kind of sword comes out of a unicorn's horn."
This freak. Then again — his party won't want to split up. That's five of us traveling together eventually. Ana included.
"I'd be glad to have you, buddy."
***
Once the fire settled again and the others drifted back toward something like rest, Kaelid found Aria still awake, turning the whole night over in her head same as him.
"Show me," she said simply. "Where you found it."
He led her back through the trees, retracing the path from memory — and found nothing waiting at the end of it. No tree. No lilacs. No clearing at all, just unbroken forest where a moonlit space had stood a few hours before.
"...It was right here," Kaelid said, turning in a slow circle. "I swear it was right here."
Aria studied the empty stretch of trees for a long moment, arms crossed. "Maybe it's not really here at all. Not the way normal places are. Maybe it only exists when it wants to be found."
"That's not comforting."
"Wasn't trying to be comforting. Just honest." She glanced at the horn, still visible at the top of his pack. "Whatever that thing is, I don't think this forest is going to explain it to us. Come on. Get some sleep before you fall over."
He didn't argue.
They walked back to camp in silence, the forest settling around them the way it always did once something strange had passed through and moved on. Kaelid glanced back once, right at the treeline, half-expecting to see moonlight where there shouldn't be any.
There wasn't. Just ordinary dark, ordinary trees, like the clearing had never been there to begin with.
Maybe it wasn't. Maybe none of tonight actually happened the way I think it did.
But the horn sat solid and warm against his back when he settled down near the dying fire, and across the clearing, Ana slept with her mismatched eyes finally closed, and both of those felt real enough to hold onto.
He was asleep before he could decide whether that thought scared him or not.