Three hours before departure, she pulled up the internet and showed me every terrifying news report about Nimorran. Flood, creepy and abandoned places, missing people, and something about The Crater swallowing a village.
I’d only been on the train for thirty minutes when she called to check up, even though she knew the ride would take twenty. Whole. Hours.
Twenty freaking hours.
I would’ve rather locked myself in a house and set the building on fire if this trip wasn’t my idea.
I tried to distract myself by glancing at the kid beside me. A baby with wide grey eyes was staring like I’d just escaped from a circus. I grinned at her, all sweet and charming, and even gave her a wave. But that was the moment the little traitor chose to turn away. Instantly.
I sat mid-wave, hand frozen in the air. Then I laughed it off, acting like I didn’t just get rejected by someone who probably eats crayons and rubber for fun.
When I turned back, I buried my face in the book I’d been reading since last night.
It was a thick academic text calledVeiled Realms: Histories of the Hidden South. Not exactly a page-turner, but it had this one chapter that kept me hooked. It was about the Særi Vale Insurgency.
Six hundred years ago, there’d been a secluded kingdom in the South—Særi Vale. No one alive could quite agree if it had truly existed, because most of its records were lost in what scholars now called The Ashing. All that remained were burned scripts, translated relics, and a single map with half the names scratched out.
But the legend? The legend was everywhere. At least for people who were interested.
It said the last ruler of Særi Vale made a deal with a god that fell from the sky. A being with silver eyes that bled moonlight. In exchange for protecting the people, she gave up her soul, binding it to his. Peace followed…for a while.
Then she vanished. He went mad. And Særi Vale was swallowed by smoke and silence.
No one knew what went wrong.
Presently, most historians think it was metaphorical. But a few believed the kingdom was cursed and erased.
Honestly? I wasn’t sure what I believed. But there was a portrait carved into the wall of a broken temple in the North-west, dated roughly to that period. A woman with moon-pale eyes, holding a blade to her own chest while a kingdom behind her collapsed.
Yeah. That image hasn’t left my head since I saw it.
Six hours in, my eyes were begging for mercy. I closed the book and leaned against the window, the cool glass biting at my cheek. The trees blurred into long green strokes, the sky smeared in dark blue.
Sleep tugged at me. And I didn’t fight it.
I dragged myself out of sleep two hours later just to shove some overpriced train food down my throat, then crawled back to sleep hoping the remaining nine hours would magically disappear.
They didn’t.
My mother had already called ten times by then. Thankfully, her calls and texts gave me something to do other than sleep and read.
Somewhere during hour sixteen, I went to the train’s sorry excuse of a bathroom and stretched my sore body. I wished I could massage my butt—it was hurting. Sitting still that long felt like my body was staging a protest.
And yet...I sat.
And time crawled.
By the time the train screeched to its final stop, my brain was fried, my legs were jelly, and I thought I might actually cry from joy. That was until I remembered I had four boxes to drag off this damn train.
Yeah. Four.
My mother was right afterall.
I had my temporary stay booked two weeks ago and a map on my phone to guide me. That part was fine. What wasn’t fine? Getting all my crap out of this station alone.
Funny how I never thought about that part.
I left the boxes at the edge of the platform and slipped through the crowds, stepping out into the open, hoping I’d spot a cab or gods, even a wheelbarrow would do.
